Igor-
Marin-
Ovsky
Yes
‘Every moment of life is special’
we
heave
to
heft
in
One
and
every
Light
filled
breath.
Time to Pause
This is my first post for maybe five months.
It has been a wonderful time to pause, centre and immerse into contemplative practice, private discourse and growth.
Please find below a celebration of a shared experience of pausing last week.
Pausing together.
I sit next to James’ glassy eyed breath
slurring in grief and quiet disconnect to
witness stressed footfalls pass swift his lament
brown staining duvet and cardboard cement
changeless frayed fingering in woollen damp thread
cap churning suchness through fear fuelling dread.
To follow, I swallow guilt filled regret
bus fares, fast food and dead father non-sleep
sick discharge of mother and sore bloated feet
crazings on paving, stunned cracks in shared ground
oozed out un-sparing, unseen yet, profound
re-rememberings of something beyond
so still to relax I sit side by side
still breathing with James, still leaning, we Three
for grace-filled unknowings to let this time be.
Camino time slips
And as the past city life speeds,
my daze upon the Camino sporadically slips into the crevices between sandy screed, my stride scuffs un-timely, once and twice and once again, refining the footfall to the changing crunch of striations in rock and grey-brown earth that’s been pre-laid and pre-pounded by the millions of souls traversing This Way before me.
Founded, pre-pounded and now prepared for us by this Mother Earth who is pushing up her moulton heart to welcome home our weary souls, to reconfirm our pre-laid place beyond these shifting sands of sod.
Foot bottoms touch essences of love, then encroached within the rationality of rubber thin on rock so hard, they fall away.
This new days sun shadow softly calls to soothe minds that even still resist to perambulate upon such pre-occupations of partiality that niggle into this moment the half forgotten worrisome realities of distancing and home.
Shadows follow me far and close friends unknowingly chatter away.. Their words dance with the vistas to cool and delight, to distract the night but even so the internal workings of controlling thought still finds the right to rise unbidden upon my bile filling mouth.
This sputter and spittle upon every incline salts to blend chapped lip and furred tongue to extend fibres in warmth and dampenings to darken cotton and stick to skin and to the very frame upon my back.
I stop and stoop to breathe and chill this urge to just give in, to cool these sweats to no-thing, to engage in nothing but the witnessing of white rings growing freely upon clothing, as my heart sings to the soundings of eardrums that seem well beyond me and as eventually my rich red blood of imagining flows more deeply within rivers that gurgle to meet and greet in the most fulsome expression of coughing fits that are fit to fill this verdant valley before me.
And as time passes, as I gulp into this morning again and once again as I gradually begin to lose sight of my friendly companions, this road opens to become one.
Regrouped, I pick up by baggage and gingerly step into another unknowing clump of determination and propensity to drive my limbs into and through this mid morning slump of will.
Everything passes, this too will pass.
And so my mantra grows and sure enough, back into my stride, I glide and smile to remember that beauty and light naturally unfurls when determination and spirited will gently allows Earth’s tenderness to immerse within my feet.
Theresa of Avila (when speaking about how to move towards the infinite)
‘The secret is determination, decision and will.’
Camino 2: New daze dawning
Waking I have become one of the thirty-two who gather belongings in the dark and move into this new day. I have become a breathing, watching part of The Way, this emerging disparate collective of 10,000 hero’s and shero’s who every month journey towards Santiago and St James.
gloom follows darkness while
memories encroach upon
un-stretched footfalls of this repeating now.
emergent sinews warm within an unfamiliar
familiar sunrise. heart rates beat through
dust tracks of sweat to trickle back and traipse to trail
before these mountainous beauties.
Moved to become, step by step, we move towards that distant place
where Love lays bare its beckoning
where futures burn the residues of mindlessness
where soft blues circulate and commune
to toe and heal past pavement cracks
to haze and soothe in mindfulness
this earth bound cling to far off family bliss
and the half remembered vagrancies
of city centre urbane stress.
‘….so too He fashioned the hero, the poet or orator. The poet cannot do what that the other does, he can only admire, love and rejoice in the hero….for the poet is as it were the hero’s better nature, powerless it may be as a memory is, but also transfigured as a memory is.’ S. Kierkegaard, from preview to ‘Fear and Trembling.’
stilled i long
Silence:
O h h
deep rooted kiss
gift me Your mist
within this
blandishment
of body and brain.
M m m
yes yes stilled i long for such and such a
feathering breath for
Prescience to soothe
this slightness of mine
enlightening tight fists
un-pounding pale hearts
to soften free beats vibrating in Time.
Strengthened in Life (version two)
Breathe-out
and
stand
the Weh
is at hand
Breathe-in
rejoice
let
Yah guide
the voice
for when
joy fills
the lungs
when
breath-full-ness
comes
anxieties fall
as
Love Be-stills all.
On the pure:
meditate
For the just:
Supplicate
Praise both:
Noble and True
Give thanks for:
Virtue
With the Loveless:
Consort
and with all good report
‘Rejoice’
I say twice
and Be strengthened in
Life.
After Philippians V4: 4-13
city slowness 